“Oh, I get it.” I slid onto the bench seat and picked up my phone. “You’re okay with this style of walking because it means your tail is far less likely to get stepped on. Well, you know what my response to that is going to be. Pay a little more attention to where my feet are and you wouldn’t have a problem.”

“Mrr!”

I ignored him—rarely a wise thing to do—and called Tabitha. “Hi, it’s Minnie. It’s not too late to call, is it?”

“Good heavens, no,” Tabitha said. “No sleep for me until I watch the news and get all sorts of bad images in my head to ruin my dreams. Let’s talk suspects. Compare notes. Assess possibilities. Do whatever it is that the formal law enforcement does, but backward and in high heels.”

I smiled at the Ginger Rogers–Fred Astaire reference and once again made a mental note to make sure my aunt and Tabitha met. “Are you a list maker?”

“From way back.” Tabitha laughed. “I used to . . . no, never mind. You don’t care about what I did forty years ago, before you were born, when I was fresh out of college and making my way in the world.”

I sort of cared, particularly if it was funny, but for efficiency’s sake, I said, “Shall we each do a list, or should we use one master?”

“Young lady, the two of us are going to get along just fine.”

“Master it is,” I said happily. “I’ll take notes now, put it into the computer tomorrow, and then we can figure out if we want to e-mail it back and forth or use a shared file.”

“Perfect. First on the list is our unhappy and entitled little friend Ariella Tice.”

“Alphabetical by first name?” I pulled paper and pen from my backpack and starting writing.

“Hmm. I was thinking more in terms of who popped into my head first, but your slant is better.”

My laugh turned into a sigh. “She wasn’t a very happy person, was she?”

“The poor thing,” Tabitha said. “But what we need to determine is motive. And see if we can tie her to the car that almost hit our precious bookmobile.”

As always when I heard someone I barely knew refer to “our” bookmobile, my heart swelled with pleasure and pride. “Ideas on that?”

“Not yet. Let’s move on to other suspects.” She paused. “Bob Bernier. He and his brother hadn’t talked in years, and then he’s calling on Lindy right after Brown died? Seems more than a little suspicious.”

I hesitated. Thinking that someone might be a killer was harder than I’d thought it would be. But temporarily thinking the worst of someone had to be better than letting a murderer go free. “When I stopped to talk to Lindy, Brown’s wife, his brother was there with her and . . . cut that out!”